Getting Away With Murder: An Examination of Arrest Clearances (From Trends, Risks, and Interventions in Lethal Violence: Proceedings of the Third Annual Spring Symposium of the Homicide Research Working Group, P 91-98, 1995, Carolyn Block and Richard Block, eds.)

• NCJ Number: 159896
• Author(s): M Riedel
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 8 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Justice Programs (OJP)
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/NCJRS
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS. NIJ Research Report, See NCJ-154254 for complete document.

Annotation

Since at least 1960, the number of murders that have been cleared through an arrest has declined. This fall in the clearance rate raises questions of public safety and police effectiveness, and worsens the trauma and pain suffered by the victim's family.

Abstract

This paper examines some major theoretical and methodological problems in doing research on murder clearances. Clearances often rely on information supplied by third parties; research on third parties focuses on their role as mediators and facilitators, and as passive observers. This paper offers a view of third parties as knowledgeable people in the community whose cooperation with the police is problematic. The methodological section of the paper discusses the difficulties in using Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) to study clearances, and ways of coping with the problem of missing data. 1 table, 1 figure, and 26 references